


London Werewolves

by BowlOfGlow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, M/M, Magical Realism, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:56:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1589108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BowlOfGlow/pseuds/BowlOfGlow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were werewolves in London. John had no idea how many, but he knew they were there. People walked past them during the day, utterly oblivious. Perhaps some of them were living in his very building, and he didn’t know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



> Written for the [April Swap](http://fuzzy-icons.livejournal.com/13730.html)

Being back in London felt surreal. People hurrying to work early in the morning, the smell of the rain, the hustle of the city – everything felt alien. It was as if John had left London for three decades instead of three years, and the city he’d come back to was very different from the city he remembered. He drifted through London like a ghost, and at night he dreamed.

Memories he’d tried to suppress during the day took hold of his brain, and without the aid of light and consciousness he found himself unable to fend them off. He laid down, as frightened and helpless as he had been months ago, the moment of the attack. He always tried to resist the pull of sleep but there were only so many days a man could remain awake, and eventually he slipped under.  
Exhaustion never granted him a dreamless rest. Behind his eyelids shadows took mysterious shapes. Lights coming from the street, reflected on his window, glinted in the dark like yellow eyes.

He heard the howls in the distance.

“You’re okay,” John repeated over and over, pressing a soaked gauze against Ryan’s ripped stomach. Blood oozed out, thick and warm, staining the sand black. 

“You’ll be all right,” John kept repeating, and he knew he wasn’t making sense, he knew there was no way Ryan would ever be all right again, but for some reason it was important he kept repeating it, and even if Ryan was certainly going to die, at least John could say that he had tried, he had _tried_.

“You’ll be all right, mate,” John repeated, pressing on Ryan’s stomach so hard that his hands slipped inside. “I’ve got you.”

The howls sounded closer now but John couldn’t get up, he could not turn.

“It’s okay,” John lied, eyes fixed on Ryan’s white face.

Ryan gasped like a man about to drown. His eyes snapped open just as a set of sharp teeth sank deep into John’s shoulder, and they were filled with horror.

John woke up with an echoing gasp, clutching his wounded shoulder, a scream stuck in his throat. His vest was clinging to his torso and his back, and it took him a frightened few seconds to realize that it was sweat and not blood slicking his skin, pooling in the hollow of his neck.  
He dragged himself upright, sitting with his back against the wall. His heart was thudding madly in his chest, his hands were shaking. He couldn’t breathe. He got up on unsteady legs to open the window, inhaling the cold air of the night in large gulps. Little by little his heart slowed down but the overwhelming sense of anxiety remained, wedged in his ribcage, a heavy weight against his lungs.  
He leaned with his forehead against the window glass. A black cloud unraveled in airy wisps, and from between its ragged edges the moon peeked with her white, glowing face. Full moon.  
John shivered. There were werewolves in London. He had no idea how many, but he knew they were there. People walked past them during the day, utterly oblivious. Perhaps some of them were living in his very building, and he didn’t know. Bile rose in his throat. He closed the blinds of the window, trying to keep the odious face of the moon out of his sight and out of his thoughts.

 

John met Mike Stamford as he was limping home after yet another pointless session with his therapist.

“John,” a voice called. “John Watson?” 

John turned towards the bench he’d just walked past, saw a man with glasses and a round familiar face.

“Stamford,” the man said, pointing at himself. “Mike Stamford? We were at Bart’s together.”

“Yes, sorry, Mike! Hello,” John replied, though he hadn’t recognized him at first, and moved his cane from his right hand to the other to shake Mike’s proffered hand.

“I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at! What happened?” Mike asked, smiling.

John looked down at his cane and his lame leg with a grimace.

“Well,” John said. “I got shot.”

The lie slipped easily enough from his lips and Mike, too mortified by his tactless question, didn’t press him for details.

Mike asked John if he could stop for a coffee and a bit of a chat, and thought John didn’t really feel like it, he thought declining the invitation would be too rude. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do, at any rate.  
They sat on a bench and John asked Mike a few questions about his wife and his job at Bart’s, but mostly he let Mike ramble on, and Mike seemed happy enough to do more than his share of talking to fill in John’s silence. When Mike asked him where he was staying, John told him about his tiny flat, the only thing he could afford on his army pension. He supposed he could always look for another place somewhere that wasn’t London but he’d always loved the city, and despite his present sense of alienation he doubted he would feel better in another place.

“Can’t you get, I don’t know, a flatshare or something?” Mike suggested.

John snorted. “Come on,” he said. “Who would want me for a flatmate?” 

Mike smiled to himself, seemingly amused.

“What?” 

“You’re the second person to say that to me today.”

John turned to look at him. “Who was the first?”

 

The first, as it turned out, had been some bloke named Sherlock Holmes. Mike took John to one of the labs at Bart’s, where they found the man in question in the middle of some experiment. A man of science, it seemed. Tall, thin, with piercing eyes and quick hands, he moved around the lab with smooth elegance. He looked younger than John had imagined.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” were the first words he spoke to John.

“Sorry?”

“Afghanistan or Iraq, which was it?” the man asked, and turned to look directly at John for the first time with inquisitive gray eyes.

“Afghanistan,” John stammered, confused. 

The man proceeded to tell John that he played the violin when he was thinking, sometimes he didn’t talk for days, and that he’d got his eye on a nice place in central London.

“Together we should be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow evening at seven o’ clock,” he announced, before dashing out of the lab to retrieve a riding crop he had left in the morgue. (John didn’t even try to puzzle out the meaning of that sentence because it made absolutely no sense.) 

He threw his name at John almost as an afterthought, just as he was walking out of the room. “The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B, Baker Street. Afternoon!”

John just stood there, bewildered, staring at the door.

 

No sane person would think of sharing a flat with a manic man who seemed to ignore the basic rules of common courtesy and looked more than a bit barmy – but John had never thought of himself as particularly sensible, and it was the only interesting thing it’d happened to him in months, so when he got home he googled the man’s name (there couldn’t be that many ‘Sherlock Holmes’s in London) and was lucky enough to find a website.  
“The Science of Deduction.” This Sherlock Holmes seemed to be some sort of… detective? Hard to tell. Apparently the man thought he had elevated the “art of deduction” to a science. The website was partly as pretentious as its title and partly boring, with ranting essays about very random topics, such as different types of natural fibres or the classification of plant-derived poisons. One didn’t have to look very hard to see the sparks of brilliance, however, and John found he was intrigued despite himself.

 

The flat Sherlock had found was actually very nice and so was Mrs Hudson, the landlady. Sherlock had apparently decided to move straight in – overflowing boxes were strewn across the living room, there was a human skull on the mantelpiece and beakers and vials cluttered the kitchen table, but John didn’t really mind. It was… almost nice, a flat that actually looked lived in for a change.

“Consulting detective”, that was Sherlock’s job, as he prickly informed John. The only one in the world, too. He’d asked John to accompany him to a crime scene, saying his opinion as a medical man might be useful.

“Don’t they have people on Forensics?” John had asked.

“I don’t work with them,” Sherlock had replied cryptically. 

And Sherlock on a crime scene was… brilliant. There was no other word for it. If John had thought most of what Sherlock had written on his website was just pretentious boasting, he soon changed his mind when he saw how the man could read clues no one else saw, and how he could reconstruct a whole story from the smallest mark.

“You make it sound like some magic trick. Anyone could do it if only they paid attention to what’s under their nose,” Sherlock told John when he expressed his amazement. “I explained you how I deduced everything I told you about your brother.”

Indeed, Sherlock had somehow read Harry’s drinking habits on John’s phone, and he’d even managed to deduce Harry and Clara’s recent divorce. That didn’t mean he’d got everything right.

“Not my brother,” John said, trying to hide his amused smirk at Sherlock’s incredulous expression. “Harry’s short for Harriet.”

“Ah,” Sherlock said. “There’s always something.”

 

Living with Sherlock was… something else.  
221B was in a state of constant chaos. Old papers and magazines were scattered around the living room (John picked them up and tried to stack them in a neat pile every now and then, but they never stayed that way for long), trinkets and weird objects of every sort – apparently souvenirs of old cases – adorned the mantelpiece and the bookshelves. Sherlock always had some experiment going on and seemed to treat the kitchen as his personal lab. John could put up with the microscope and all the equipment sitting on the kitchen table, but had to draw the line at poisonous compounds stored in the cupboard into unassuming boxes, especially when they looked an awful lot like sugar or salt or anything John might be tempted to put into their food.  
Sherlock was also in the habit of keeping human body parts he’d brought home from the morgue in their fridge – after much quarrelling (and after John had found a head in there) Sherlock had agreed to keep them all in the lower shelf, and to label any specimen that looked even vaguely edible.

Mrs Hudson seemed unruffled both by the mess in their flat and by Sherlock’s manners, and seemed actually delighted that Sherlock had managed to find himself a flatmate “as nice as John.”  
There were often people coming and going – Detective Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard sometimes popped in to ask for Sherlock’s help or advice, and on top of the work he got from helping the police, Sherlock accepted private clients when he deemed their cases interesting enough.  
Most of these clients came from John’s own blog, though Sherlock was reluctant to admit it. John’s therapist had insisted he write about his life after being invalidated home from the war, and John had devoted himself to writing about Sherlock’s most interesting cases. He was still half-heartedly looking for a job but now he often accompanied Sherlock on crime scenes and had become a sort of assistant – and since Sherlock’s work was, in John’s opinion, more fascinating than anything else going on in his life, writing about it seemed the most logical conclusion. 

“People read _this_?” Sherlock had asked in disbelief, scrunching his nose as he read John’s latest blog entry. He didn’t think John much of a writer and had said so in more than one occasion, berating him for omitting details he considered essential, or for not describing Sherlock’s deductive process thoroughly enough.

“No one wants to read four paragraphs of you going on and on about bloodstain pattern analysis or different types of tobacco ash,” had retorted John, and Sherlock had left the room in a huff.

It hadn’t taken John long to learn that Sherlock was prone to sulking and throwing temper tantrums. It was very much like living with an overgrown toddler at times. Sherlock’s mind, brilliant as it was, seemed to require constant entertainment. Cases and experiments were usually enough to keep Sherlock busy, but when criminals were lying low and private clients failed to provide their share of interesting cases, Sherlock fell victim to sudden bouts of apathy. Sometimes he turned to his beloved violin – he could be an excellent player, John had found, but Sherlock in an irritable mood meant John would be subjected to a lot of screeching and plaintive noises, usually in the dead of night or the early hours of the morning.

John suspected anyone else would’ve left after barely a week – and yet, he thought sharing a flat with Sherlock had been the best decision he could’ve taken. Now he felt he could be of some use at least, and well, life with Sherlock Holmes was anything but boring.  
Although he couldn’t understand at first why Sherlock would want him to come along to assist him on his cases – he hardly needed John’s input to solve them, and he seemed to use John as a mere sounding board most of the time – it had become clear that Sherlock valued his presence, rather than tolerate him as he did almost everyone else, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade being the only exceptions that John could think of.  
Sherlock had welcomed John’s interest in his work with an eagerness that made John think he’d been just as lonely as he was before moving in to Baker Street, and John, who was always so reserved and guarded, had come to consider this strange man a friend rather than a mere flatmate in a ridiculously short time.  
That didn’t mean Sherlock didn’t still behave like a colossal git, sometimes. 

One day, during one of Sherlock’s attacks of boredom, John decided to go to Tesco, thinking it would be better to leave the flat for a while. He told Sherlock he would be back in a couple of hours, thinking he might as well take walk (Sherlock’s only reply was an irritated grunt) and left. Halfway down Marylebone Road though, John realized he’d left his wallet home and had to walk back. He opened the door of the flat warily, bracing himself for whatever awful thing Sherlock might be doing to find relief from the oppressing ennui – but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that welcomed him when he entered the living room.

Curled on their sofa, there was a wolf. 

No, not a wolf, John corrected himself – a _were_ wolf. The horrifying image of those beasts had been branded in his brain ever since the day of the attack, and John could have recognized a werewolf anywhere. Bigger than a normal wolf – and also stronger, quicker and deadlier, as John knew first-hand.  
The black ball of fur stirred and uncurled, and the beast raised its head. Big yellow eyes fixed on John’s face.  
John didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. His heart was beating so fast it hurt and its wild beats were the only thing John could hear – for an horrifying moment he thought his heart might explode in his chest.  
The beast blinked at John and gave a yelp. Then it hopped off the sofa, and looked for a second as if it was trying to stand on its hind legs. John watched, petrified, as the body of the wolf lengthened and its fur seemed to retreat under its skin. He had never seen a werewolf’s transformation, and in his shocked state he would have found it hard to pay any attention to the process, but as it happened it was so quick it seemed to take place literally in the bat of an eye. One second John was staring at a huge black werewolf, the next at the stark naked body of his flatmate.  
John could do nothing but stare. 

“John,” Sherlock said, sounding surprised and looking slightly mortified. “Excuse me for a second.”

And then he gave John an awkward nod, as he might have done to greet an acquaintance he’d crossed on the street, and walked out of the living room.

John didn’t move.

A werewolf. He’d been living under the same roof as a _werewolf_. John’s leg started throbbing, and he plopped into his chair because he feared it wouldn’t hold him up for much longer.  
He rubbed his hands on his face, trying to get his breathing under control.

“Drink this,” Sherlock said and John, startled into looking up, saw that Sherlock was standing in front of him, holding a glass of water. Had he always moved so silently?

“Thanks,” John said mechanically, accepting the glass, but he didn’t drink. 

He looked up at Sherlock, who was now wearing a t-shit and one of his numerous dressing gowns. He looked… like usual. He didn’t know why he would expect him to look any different.  
Some water splashed on John’s trousers, and he looked down at his hand. It was shaking.  
He put the glass on the floor, beside his chair. Sherlock fidgeted with the belt of his gown, then sat down too, facing John.

“So,” Sherlock said. “I imagine you’ve got questions.”

John laughed. It was a nervous laugh, he couldn’t help it, and then clasped a hand over his mouth. Sherlock’s tense expression turned to one of concern.

“You,” John said, his voice unsteady. He started again. “You’re a werewolf.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “I think that’s pretty obvious now.”

“You’re a werewolf,” John said again, as if repeating it might give the statement some sense. 

Sherlock said nothing but raised both his eyebrows, as if waiting for John to say something sensible. 

“You never said.”

“It never seemed relevant.”

“Relevant!” John almost gasped. “Jesus, Sherlock, we share a flat. I’d say that’s the first thing you should have mentioned.” 

Sherlock straightened in his chair. “I don’t see why,” he said in a defensive tone.

“Oh, do you want me to give you a list?”

“Very well,” Sherlock retorted, “perhaps after I’ve given you mine.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry to have upset you,” Sherlock said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. John had never heard Sherlock apologize – not even for the body parts in the fridge – and the words made him forget what he wanted to say for a moment. 

“I didn’t intend for you to find out this way,” Sherlock went on while John was silent. “But I never thought I could keep it a secret forever, nor did I plan to. I was going to tell you, eventually.”

“Why not straight away?” John said. “Potential flatmates should know the worst, remember?”

It wasn’t a tactful thing to say but John was too shaken to care. Sherlock’s expression closed off.

“Hardly the worst,” Sherlock said. “This doesn’t make me neither better nor worse than the man you already know.”

“You don’t see why I might have a problem with that?” John asked.

“I do,” answered Sherlock, “which is why I didn’t tell you. Would you have accepted to meet me at Baker Street, had you known I was a werewolf?”

The answer must have been written plainly on John’s face because Sherlock shook his head with a bitter smile.

“No matter how integrated we seem to be, I’ve come to expect some prejudice,” he said. “I don’t think it was that unreasonable to want you to give me a fair chance.”

John didn’t know what to say. The shock was wearing off, leaving place to a sense of anger he wasn’t sure was justified. He bent to pick up his glass from the floor, drinking the water in two large gulps.

“Are you going to move out?” Sherlock asked. He posed the question in a carefully neutral tone and his face remained unreadable, but John knew him well enough to recognize the tension his ramrod straight back betrayed. 

“You put a human head in the fridge and I’m still here,” John replied. “I hardly think you can do worse.”

Sherlock’s looked surprised, and then his lips twitched, and John couldn’t help but smile.  
They remained silent for a few minutes, but there wasn’t as much tension in the room as there had been just a moment before. John cleared his throat.

“So…” he began. 

“I wasn’t turned,” Sherlock cut in.

“Sorry?”

“I’m a werewolf by blood. I was born this way, which means I have complete control over my transformations. A full moon has no real effect on me, in case you were worrying about that.”

“Oh.” John nodded. Of course, John had been too stunned to connect the dots, but it was obvious now that Sherlock had pointed it out. Werewolves that had been turned couldn’t transform at will, but only during a full moon, unlike born werewolves – and it seemed that Sherlock could transform effortlessly whenever he wished to. John frowned as a thought suddenly occurred to him. 

“Your brother?” John asked. He had met Mycroft, and he was just as brilliant as his brother, but infinitely more scary when he wanted to be. The idea that Mycroft might also be a werewolf was… disturbing, somehow.

Sherlock grimaced. “God, no,” he said. “Just me, and my father. The only way in which we were ever alike.” 

“Are there others?” John asked. He winced inwardly at the anxious tone of the question.

“What, in my family? London? The _world_?” Sherlock said, teasingly. 

John huffed a laugh. “I mean… people we know.”

Sherlock thought about it for a few seconds. “Yes,” he said.

John waited.

“It seems hardly fair to tell you,” Sherlock said, and got to his feet.

“Oh, come on,” John complained. 

Sherlock walked into the kitchen, then went back to John and dropped his wallet into his lap.

“I believe you were on your way to Tesco,” he said, and although he wasn’t hostile it was as clear a dismissal as any, “and I’ve got a case to work on. See you later.”

 

Neither of them said more about the subject, that day. John walked around Tesco almost in a daze, and couldn’t stop thinking about Sherlock’s revelation. Had there been clues he had missed? He had noticed that despite his thin frame Sherlock possessed a kind of wiry strength, but he had never given it much thought. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t think he’d ever seen Sherlock properly tired out. He was never out of breath when they were running after criminals, he slept only a few hours per night, and John had no idea where he found all the energy that kept him going, given how little he usually ate. Well, it looked like John had found the answer to that question.

When he got back to Baker Street, Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, busy with what looked like an extremely delicate experiment, and John didn’t think it wise to disturb him. When Sherlock looked like that, John always feared a slip of hand might be enough to blow up the entire flat – so he stored the groceries away in silence and then retired to the living room, where he tried to work on a new post for his blog. The day then progressed just like usual, so much so that John almost forgot the surreal conversation he’d had with Sherlock just a couple of hours before.

Then there was an exultant cry from the kitchen, and Sherlock bounced into the living room with a manic grin, telling John he’d solved the case. He’d already wrapped himself in his big coat and scarf before the words had a chance to sink in, and Sherlock had to frogmarch a confused John to Scotland Yard while prattling on about his incredible breakthrough.

 

He could hear the wolves howl in the distance.

“You’ll be all right,” John told Ryan, though his life was bleeding out and his heart was slowing down.

Under the cover of darkness, the wolves were approaching on silent feet. 

“Ryan,” John pleaded. “Stay with me.”

A beast growled ominously behind John’s back. Claws of steel ripped through his uniform just before vicious teeth snapped closed around his shoulder.

John woke up. His heart was racing and he was drenched in sweat, as always. He was in his own bed, at Baker Street, safe in London. He brought a shaking hand to his face and pressed it against his eyes, waiting for the sense of horror his dream had aroused to dissipate. It had been a while since he’d last had this particular nightmare, and he didn’t really have to search his brain to know what had awaken this particular memory. He swung his legs off the bed. Adrenaline was still running through his body, he certainly wasn’t going to fall asleep again anytime soon. He threw on a t-shirt and walked downstairs. 

Sherlock’s voice made him jump.

“You were having nightmare,” he rumbled from somewhere in the living room. John squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and saw Sherlock’s familiar shape curled on the sofa.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” John said, voice rough from sleep. It occurred to him that he might have been screaming, but he was too embarrassed to ask Sherlock.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Sherlock replied. He sat up, and even with no light on John could make out his ruffled curls, sticking up in every direction. “Are you… all right?” Sherlock asked. He sounded almost tentative, and it occurred to John that if he could pinpoint what had triggered his nightmare so probably could Sherlock, even without knowing what had happened to him. He wondered for a fleeting second if he was feeling guilty. “Yes, I’m fine,” John said.

He hesitated, then went to sit in his armchair. He could feel Sherlock’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn.

“It wasn’t a bullet,” Sherlock observed after a minute or so of silence. John snorted. He didn’t need to ask Sherlock what he was talking about, that question could only mean one thing – and even if it was a tactless question, it was almost a relief to see Sherlock act like his usual self.

“No, it wasn’t,” John confirmed. He couldn’t bring himself to elaborate, not right after that nightmare, not when the night and the memories were still hanging thick around him. He could feel that Sherlock was bursting with questions, but he probably sensed John’s unwillingness to talk and managed to restrain himself. 

Without saying anything Sherlock got up and went to put the kettle on. 

They drank tea in silence without even turning the light on, and only after a while, when he remembered how Sherlock had been curled on the sofa, did it occur to John to ask: “Why did you turn? I mean, when I was out today.”

Sherlock paused with his mug halfway to his mouth. 

“It’s helpful, sometimes. I find I can think better, after. And,” he stopped, then added, almost uncertainly, “it had been a while.” 

He didn’t say why that was, but John didn’t exactly have to ask. He took a sip of tea. “I don’t mind, you know. If you wanted… needed, to do it again. I mean… Don’t stop on my account.”

John wasn’t sure why he said that after he’d be so shocked earlier that day, and even Sherlock looked a little doubtful.

“Thank you,” he said anyway.

When John woke up the next morning he was a little disoriented to find he’d fallen asleep in his chair. Sherlock was no longer on the sofa – in fact he wasn’t even in the flat, but at some point during the night he had carefully draped a blanket over John.

 

Just because they didn’t talk about it, it didn’t mean John never thought about Sherlock being a werewolf. On the contrary, he thought about it... quite a lot, if he had to be honest. His mind kept circling around it with the same kind of morbid fascination that rendered someone unable to look away from a gruesome car crash. Logically John knew that it didn’t make much of a difference. Sherlock wasn’t going to turn into a beast once a month during full moon nights, and despite John’s half-hearted permission, he’d never shifted again – at least never in John’s presence. He wasn’t dangerous. Or well, he _was_ , but it had nothing to do with Sherlock being a werewolf, it was about Sherlock experimenting in the kitchen and running after murderers for a living, and that wasn’t anything John hadn’t deduced after the first week of sharing a flat with the man.  
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sherlock. Or maybe it was, a bit. John knew his fear was irrational, but on the first new moon after discovering Sherlock’s identity he’d locked himself in his room, and had spent a night more horrible than usual. John was fairly certain Sherlock had noticed the signs of exhaustion on his face in the morning, but thankfully he hadn’t remarked on it. 

John tried his best not to let his mind associate Sherlock to the beasts that had attacked him and savagely killed all of his unit in Afghanistan. There was a difference between being a werewolf and being a brutal weapon – many cruel and unfair things happened in times of war, and it was no secret that in the army werewolves were often ruthlessly trained (and even more often, _forced_ ) to become merciless killers. John had never met any of them in the army; the brutal practice had been formally outlawed by the British government and, virtually, by every other Western country – but rumours had it there was a secret special unit of trained werewolves in the pay of the British and American governments, too.

John thought about what Sherlock had said, that there were other werewolves in their circle of friends. Now, Sherlock’s circle of friends was quite restricted, and even counting mere acquaintances there weren’t that many people both Sherlock and John knew.  
John had tried to observe Sherlock’s interactions with other people as subtly as he could, but he wasn’t sure what he should even be looking for. One day when John had jokingly asked if Mrs Hudson was a werewolf as well, trying to make Sherlock spit a name or two, Sherlock had looked at him with an expression that was half-surprised and half-impressed, and John had almost choked on his tea. “Lestrade?” he’d asked then, thinking of one of the few people who seemed able to put up with Sherlock. Sherlock had hummed in confirmation.

“Are they… your pack?” John had asked. He didn’t know much about werewolves and their etiquette, so he hoped he’d come up with the appropriate word. Maybe he hadn’t, because Sherlock bristled and looked disdainful at the mere suggestion.

“I don’t have a _pack_ ,” he’d said to John, as if dismissing a ridiculous and vaguely offensive notion, and John had raised his hand in an appeasing gesture. “Right then,” he’d said, though he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. “You’re a lone wolf. Makes sense.”

Sherlock had narrowed his eyes at John as if he was being even more ridiculous, and John had dropped the subject entirely.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which some (more) willing suspension of disbelief is required.

“We have a client,” Sherlock announced a few weeks later. John looked up from his laptop as Sherlock, who had been standing in front of the window playing a melancholy piece on his violin, sprang away and went to put his violin in its case.

“A client?” John repeated dumbly, just as their doorbell rang. Sherlock grinned at him excitedly.

“Mrs Hudson is out,” Sherlock said. “Let her in, please.”

It was a very good thing that a client had turned up on their doorstep, because Sherlock had been moaning about the lack of interesting cases for almost two weeks now. Of course, John still had to hope this case would prove interesting enough for Sherlock to accept, since Sherlock didn’t seem familiar with the saying about beggars and choosers and, even when _extremely_ bored, had turned away clients he didn’t think worthy of his attention.

The client waiting on the pavement in front of 221 was a red-haired woman in her thirties. John invited her in, and she smiled shyly when he introduced himself. “Oh, yes,” she told John. “I read your blog.”

Sherlock was already waiting in his chair when they entered the flat, fingers steepled in front of his mouth. He looked at their client with assessing eyes, then lowered his hands and motioned to the chair he had placed between his and John’s. “Please,” he said pleasantly. “Take a seat.”

“Thank you,” the woman said. She looked nervously at John, who gave her an encouraging smile, then turned back to Sherlock as she sat down. “I’ve heard so much about you, Mr Holmes,” she said earnestly. Sherlock hummed impatiently, and John fixed him with a glare he hoped was intimidating enough to make him behave for at least ten minutes.

“What can I help you with, Ms…?”

“Wilson. Gabrielle Wilson,” she said, nodding. “To be honest I wasn’t even sure I should come to you, Mr Holmes. It feels… silly now.”

“Yet here you are,” Sherlock observed, and Gabrielle smiled, but without any trace of humour. 

“Here I am, indeed.” She sighed, looking as if she wasn’t sure of where to start, and paused to think for a moment. “There’s a man I’ve met through a dating site,” she eventually said.

John tried not to let his disappointment show. There were very few things Sherlock found more boring than people trying to track down ex-lovers or potential partners on the internet, and John could see the interest dying in Sherlock’s eyes. Before either of them could say anything, Gabrielle continued.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” she said. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. Even I am not sure what to think. This man… I’ve met him only a couple of times, and he seems genuinely nice. But I think he may be up to something.”

“What do you mean?” John asked.

Gabrielle looked at him. “The dating site wasn’t even my idea, it was a gift from a friend, you know, premium membership for a few months… anyway. That’s not important. The thing is – I can see what profiles other users have visited in the last month.”

John saw Sherlock perk up at that. “And?” he asked.

“And,” Gabrielle said. “I looked at his profile and I saw that apparently he’s only ever contacted women named Gabrielle.”

Sherlock smiled and looked at John, who smiled back with no small relief. “That’s quite interesting,” Sherlock commented. “Please, continue.”

 

Gabrielle had never invited Simon (for that was the man’s name) to her place, not after just a couple of dates because “there’s so many weird people on the internet.” They had met first in a café and then at the National Gallery. She hadn’t even told him in which area of London she lived, and that’s what made her notice that he seemed oddly insistent about finding out. Oh, he had tried to be subtle, dropping hints here and there, but she could tell he really wanted to know where she lived. That was what had prompted her to take a closer look at his profile, and then she’d discovered she was just a Gabrielle on a list of many.  
“Do you keep anything valuable at home?” Sherlock had asked.  
No, she did not. Unless you could call a collection of rocks “valuable” – she had quite a few, geology was her passion. Sherlock had asked her who knew about her collection anyway.  
Not that many people, because they never seemed to find it as interesting a topic as she did. It was just her close friends. And well, she had posted a couple of pictures on her blog, but almost no one read it.

 

“She has a blog?” John asked Sherlock the following day, when he found him in the kitchen with his laptop.

“Apparently, yes,” Sherlock replied, without looking away from the screen of John’s computer. “And it is just as boring as she warned me it would be. Ten years’ worth of information, John, and I have to sift through all of them.”

John leaned in, peeking over Sherlock’s shoulder. He was reading an entry tagged _25 August, 2008_ , in which Gabrielle talked about a trip to Cornwell she had gone on with a couple of friends.

“You think her blog might be the key to solving the case?” John asked. It seemed a bit improbable, but then Sherlock was the qualified the detective, and he had been known to follow the most implausible leads. Sherlock pointed to the sidebar of Gabrielle’s blog.

“She says she never posted a pic of herself, and she never mentions her full name, not once,” Sherlock said. “But…”

“Gabrielle,” John said, spotting the line Sherlock was pointing to. “She uses her first name.”

“Exactly,” Sherlock said triumphantly. “Oh,” he added then. “I have a list for you.” He handed John a sheet of paper with a dozen of names written on it.

John skimmed through them. “These are… all the Gabrielles?”

“Hmm,” Sherlock hummed. “I don’t think they matter at this point, Simon has obviously moved on to other women, but anything might be useful. See if you can trace any of them. Some might have met him and noticed something suspicious.”

John spent his day trying to track those women down. Sherlock had created a couple of paid accounts on the dating site ( _True Romance_ , really?) and decided to use fake profile pictures. They had nothing but the women’s names to go on – three of them had now deleted their accounts and, as it turned out, it wasn’t that easy to try to get someone to reply to you on a dating site. John’s attempts to get the other Gabrielles to reply to his messages proved unsuccessful but strangely Sherlock, who had spent the whole day perusing Gabrielle Wilson’s blog, didn’t appear overly-concerned. It was evident he believed he was on the right track, and that the answer was to be found in their client’s blog.  
As it often happened, he was right. 

“John!” Sherlock bellowed one evening from the kitchen. John had just gone to his bedroom, intending to sleep after a fairly uneventful day. It wasn’t that late, barely eleven, and he was still awake. When he walked downstairs, Sherlock was standing in the middle of the living room, eyes bright. He was wearing the same dressing gown as the day before, and John doubted he had showered or even slept in the last two days.

“What?” John asked, curiously, and Sherlock waved a piece of paper in front of his face. John took it and frowned at it. It was a printed picture of a sleeping dog with rust-coloured fur, curled on a sofa. There was no text, just the picture, but John assumed it was taken from Gabrielle’s blog.

“It’s a dog,” he said, because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to remark upon. Sherlock rolled his eyes and sighed, clearly trying to suppress a scathing comment about John’s intelligence.

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “What else?”

“It’s… a Cocker Spaniel?” John said, squinting at the pic, but Sherlock waved his hand. “Never mind the dog, John! What else is there?”

“Not much,” John said, and it was true. The only other things visible were half of a red sofa and a portion of a bright yellow wall – and then, in the upper right-hand corner of the picture a blue painting, or maybe a watercolour, cut in half by the way the picture had been shot. “The painting,” John said, pointing at the picture. “It looks a bit like… Waterloo Bridge?”

Sherlock grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, _exactly_.”

 

A stolen _Monet_. “The Waterloo Bridge, stolen from the Kunsthal art museum in October 2012, along with other six paintings,” Sherlock told John, showing him an article about the art theft on his laptop. Two paintings by Claude Monet, but also Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse. “The paintings were never recovered, and they are thought to have been burned, according to what the thieves themselves confessed.”

“But you think this is the original,” John said, and it wasn’t even a question. “You think this is one of the stolen paintings.”

“At first I thought Gabrielle Wilson had something in her possession that was more valuable than she thought,” Sherlock said. “She has built quite an impressive rock collection over the years and there are many pictures on her blog, but she was right, it has no real value. But then I saw she mentioned the dating site on her blog. She is always very careful to avoid too personal details,” he continued, “it’s a just a line in a long post, written months ago…” he handed John a printed sheet, dated _6 February, 2014_ , and John’s eyes jumped to the sentence Sherlock had underlined, _…it’s not really my thing but it’s a birthday gift, so I think I might give True Romance a try after all_.

“So you think Simon – or whoever he is – saw this, and what?”

“I think he saw a picture of the stolen painting _first_ ,” Sherlock said. “Perhaps he’s an art connoisseur – which is improbable, he and Gabrielle went to the National Gallery for their second date and she said he didn’t seem particularly knowledgeable about art. So the other option, which is somewhat more likely, is that he had something to do with the theft of the paintings in 2012. Maybe he was an accomplice. Maybe even one of the thieves, and he’s been on the lookout for this painting ever since.”

“And he just happened to stumble over this picture?” John asked. “Where did she find the painting, anyway?”

“Bought it from a street artist at the Portobello Market for 80 quids,” Sherlock said, with a small smile. “She was quite shocked when I told her it may actually be worth a good deal more than that. So, a man sees this picture and recognises the painting for what it is. He has nothing to go on expect the blogger’s first name, and he knows she’s a women living in London. Too many Gabrielles here – he might even have started a search, but it was virtually impossible to find the right woman, he probably gave up after a while. But he keeps reading her blog for any clues he might find, and then he reads that she’s just signed up to a dating site.”

“So he starts to hunt her down,” John realized. Sherlock nodded.

“We have no way of knowing how he happened to see the picture, but I intend to find out. I think there’s a lot more to this story. Smuggling operation gone wrong, perhaps – maybe he was the intended recipient. He might even know something about the other paintings.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“Now,” Sherlock said, “we wait for him to come to us.”

 

Sherlock gave Gabrielle precise instructions. She wasn’t to contact Simon first, but when he would call or text her (as he was sure he would), she should invite him to her place for a coffee, or whatever other excuse she felt like using, on the following day. Then she would give Sherlock and John the keys to her flat, and go spend the night somewhere else.  
“You think he might try to rob her during the night?” John had asked, and Sherlock had said that it might be probable – after all the man had no way of knowing whether the painting was still in the living room or even in the house, and he might have to do a search of the whole flat. It was better not to take any chances.  
After a couple of days they received Gabrielle’s call, saying she had invited Simon to her place the following day, and she would spent the night at her sister’s, just as Sherlock had suggested.

So now they waited. Sherlock was perhaps the most impatient person John had ever met, but he was exceptionally good at waiting when it was for a case. He could remain still for hours, lost in his “mind palace”, and John had often seen him wait in uncomfortable positions without moving a muscle or uttering a word of complaint during stake-outs. John wasn’t as good as Sherlock – the adrenaline kept him alert and ready for the first half an hour or so, but then boredom inevitably started to set in. 

They were both sitting in the dark in the living room, half-hidden by the sofa, John with a hand in his coat pocket, fingers wrapped around the handle of his gun. He had no idea how long they sat there, waiting for a man that might not even show up. Apparently John had inadvertently dozed off, because the next thing he knew, Sherlock was shaking his shoulder, urgently whispering his name in his ear. John sat straight, suddenly awake, and took his gun out of his pocket. He strained his ears, and heard the sound of a lock being carefully picked, then the front door being opened. A man walked into the room slowly, almost soundlessly, but not quite. Sherlock and John exchanged a look, then Sherlock gave John a terse nod, and John sprinted out from behind the sofa.

“Hands over your head!” John shouted, pointing his gun. He had the advantage of his eyes having already adjusted to the darkness of the room and saw the man freeze in confusion, turning to see where the voice had come from.

They hadn’t really thought the man might not be alone.

“Get down, John!” Sherlock suddenly shouted as light flooded the room – the lights had been switched on by someone, who? – and then two shots were fired. Pain seared John’s right calf, and he fell to his knees with a cry. “Sherlock?” he cried, momentarily blinded by the pain and the sudden light, but all he heard was an inhumane growl and a beast sprinted forward, crushing violently against one of the men’s chest and knocking him down, running towards the one that was still holding the gun and stood near the door as if unable to move.

For a moment, it was Afghanistan all over again. John looked on as the giant black wolf closed his mouth around the man’s hand, biting it viciously. The man fell to his knees with an agonising cry, and John heard the horrifying noise of bones being crushed by merciless teeth, he watched the wolf trash his head as if intent on ripping the man’s hand off, and suddenly he remembered that it was _Sherlock_ , his best friend, and not a mindless beast.

“Sherlock!” John shouted, and the wolf growled, let go of the man’s hand and turned to John, mouth still open in a cruel snarl, teeth stained with blood. He stopped growling when he saw John and whined at him. 

“I’m all right,” John said, and those words, echoes of a dream, increased the disconcerting sense of unreality. “I’m fine, it’s barely a graze,” he continued, only then realizing that it was true.  
He was bleeding but not much, his trousers were torn but the bullet seemed to have only scratched the skin. Sherlock turned to growl at the man who had fired the shots and seemed to have fainted either out of pain or fear. His accomplice lay also unconscious, having apparently knocked his head on the floor when he’d fallen.  
Apparently satisfied when neither of them moved, Sherlock turned and trotted to John, who had hauled himself of the sofa. John remained very still. It was Sherlock. He knew it was Sherlock, but he had just seen him almost rip a man’s hand off his arm, and his muzzle was still stained with blood.  
Sherlock seemed to sense John’s uneasiness, for he approached him very cautiously and looked at him before sniffing at his wound and whining pitifully.

“I’m all right, you git,” John repeated, giving the wolf a tentative pat on the head. “But I think we’d better call Lestrade.”

 

Sherlock didn’t let the paramedics get anywhere near John. Of course, John insisted that no paramedics were necessary and that he was more than capable of treating the wound himself, he was a doctor – but Sherlock’s behaviour was frankly worrying, especially since he refused to change back to his human form. He growled at everyone but John and kept pacing around him, and it was only because of Lestrade that no one tried to sedate him.

“Sir,” Anderson said in a warning tone when Lestrade crouched in front of Sherlock, but Lestrade ignored him and took Sherlock’s huge head in his hands. Sherlock didn’t growl at him but whimpered again while nervously wagging his long tail, and whatever Lestrade read in his eyes must’ve been enough to convince him that he wasn’t going to be a danger to anyone else.

“I’ll drive these two home,” he said to his team, and escorted John and Sherlock to his police car. John took Sherlock’s coat, the only thing Sherlock had been wearing that hadn’t been ripped to shreds (perhaps Sherlock had managed to quickly take it off, perhaps it had slipped off during his transformation, but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of his clothes.) Sherlock hopped onto the back seat next to John and placed his head on his lap with what sounded almost like a human sigh. Lestrade kept glancing at them in the rear-view mirror, but didn’t say a word until they were in front of Baker Street.

“You two are going to have a lot of explaining to do tomorrow,” he said to John in a mock-stern tone as he stopped in front of 221. John smiled tiredly. He had only mentioned what they were doing in Gabrielle Wilson’s flat but hadn’t given the police any details, especially because Sherlock hadn’t let anyone get too close to them. Lestrade nodded to Sherlock. 

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked. It was clear that he didn’t seem to consider Sherlock a threat to John, not even in his current agitated state, but apparently he wouldn’t think it unreasonable if John did.

“Yes,” John replied. “I just need some rest.”

Lestrade nodded. “Just call me if you need anything,” he said, and then added, apparently to Sherlock, “and you behave.” 

Sherlock huffed.

When they were finally in the flat, John took out his first-aid kit to bandage his wound. Sherlock kept following him around, getting under John’s foot, and as soon as John had taken off his trousers he was nosing at his calf, trying to lick John’s skin.

“Stop it,” John said, pushing Sherlock’s head out of the way. “Really, I can’t do anything if you keep this up. I doubt it’s very hygienic anyway.”

Sherlock sat back, staring at John with his round yellow eyes. Once John had washed away the blood, the abrasion appeared even less serious than he had thought. “See,” he told Sherlock, after he had disinfected and bandaged the wound. “I didn’t even need any stitches. I’m all better.”

Sherlock snorted, looking a bit dubious. They went in the kitchen and John put the kettle on. Sherlock kept pacing around John, around the flat, whimpering and growling incessantly with some occasional snarls. It was unnerving, and instead of Sherlock calming down, John started to get nervous as well. He wasn’t sure why Sherlock still hadn’t changed back. He had asked him but obviously Sherlock couldn’t reply, and John was starting to wonder how well Sherlock could actually understand what he said. He drank his tea in the living room while Sherlock paced around his armchair, and growing increasingly frustrated by this display of anxiety he got to his feet and announced: “I’m going to bed.”

He didn’t think he would get much sleep, but anything was better than watching Sherlock pace and growl all night, fur still smeared with blood. As soon as John got up Sherlock stopped and looked up at him, whining, his ears and tail low.

“No, I’m sorry, but I’m all worn out,” John said. “You can sit outside of my door if it makes you feel better, but I’m going to sleep now.”

He walked out of the living room without waiting to see whether or not Sherlock would follow, and was surprised when he didn’t hear the sound of claws clicking on the floor – but soon enough he heard Sherlock leaping up the stairs, and he jogged inside John’s room just as he was getting in his bed.

“No, I said _outside_ ,” John said, but Sherlock jumped on the bed and looked at him pathetically, and John didn’t feel particularly inclined to argue with a werewolf who also happened to be the most stubborn person on the planet. John sighed. 

“All right, be that way,” he said, and slid under the covers. “I can’t see how either of us is going to get any sleep tonight.”

He rolled on his side and closed his eyes. He felt Sherlock move, jostling the mattress – he curled up, then whimpered, and John was startled by a wet nose against his face. “Jesus, stop it,” he said, annoyed, batting at Sherlock’s muzzle, and Sherlock lay down beside John, putting his head on his hip.

“Well, good night,” John said after a while, and Sherlock sniffed and thumped his tail on the bed. John chuckled and, despite the weight on his hip, eventually fell asleep. 

 

When he woke up the next morning he was in an empty bed. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and wondering where Sherlock was, before hearing the tell-tale clattering of pans in the kitchen. Up and awake, then, not only in his human form but also… making breakfast? Unless it was some kind of experiment, in which case John might roll on his side again and get back to sleep because he wasn’t ready to deal with it. He walked downstairs and into the kitchen, and there Sherlock was, already showered and fully dressed, cracking eggs into a pan. He stopped when John walked in, his spatula frozen awkwardly in mid-air.

“Good morning,” he said formally, putting the spatula on the counter. 

“Morning,” John replied. He looked at Sherlock, and he seemed okay, but remembering the near meltdown of the previous night he felt compelled to ask, “Are you okay?”

“I should be asking you the same,” Sherlock said, and though he hadn’t, not really, John could read the question in the anxious look he gave him. 

“I am,” John replied, and Sherlock nodded. He took up his spatula again and turned back to the frying pan, then back again to John, his lips thin and his jaw set. He dropped the spatula on the table and stepped towards John.

“May I—” he asked, but John didn’t understand what he was asking permission for and Sherlock himself didn’t seem to know how to complete the question, so he walked in front of John and put his arms around him. For a moment John was too stunned to react. He stood there, back rigid, and then patted Sherlock awkwardly on the back. 

“I’m okay,” John repeated, and Sherlock growled, “I know,” sounding embarrassed and annoyed, though it was hard to tell whether it was at John or at himself. He buried his face in John’s neck and inhaled deeply, nuzzling briefly behind John’s ear, and John was so confused it took him a while to realize this weird hug was probably a werewolf thing, and Sherlock had indeed tried to do the same last night.

“Sorry, are you… scenting me?” John asked, puzzled, and Sherlock replied, “Oh, shut up,” though he didn’t immediately step back. When he did he looked almost ashamed and didn’t meet John’s eyes, but immediately went back to frying the eggs in the pan.

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly, “I’ve tried… it’s difficult not to. Seeing you hurt was…” he paused, looking overwhelmed, and gave up on trying to find the right word. “But it won’t happen again,” he assured John with firm conviction, and John didn’t know whether he meant the odd scenting thing or John ever getting hurt. They both sounded equally plausible.

 

Sherlock kept acting strangely around John for a while after that. He was oddly clingy, though it was clear he was trying not to show it – he seemed to grow restless whenever John was in the flat but out of his sight, and when John had to go out he texted him at regular intervals, and threatened to come and find him whenever John ignored him for too long. At the same time he seemed to be doing his best to keep some distance, physical at least. He’d always seemed to ignore John’s personal space but now, though he insisted of always being in John’s proximity or at least in his line of sight, he never sat too close to him on the sofa or peeked over his shoulder when he was typing on his laptop, and didn’t casually touch John’s arm or shoulder anymore. John suspected it had something to do with the hug Sherlock had given him – it was possible that he was a bit ashamed of it and was now feeling self-conscious, but still, the behaviour was so un-Sherlock—like that it left him puzzled.

The other baffling thing was that Sherlock had apparently dropped his investigation regarding Gabrielle Wilson’s case. When John had asked him about it a couple of days after the break-in, wanting to know if the two men had confessed anything about the other stolen paintings, Sherlock had said he had no idea.  
“I told Lestrade everything I know,” Sherlock simply said. “I think the police are more than capable of taking it from there.” John, who had never known him to utter the words “police” and “capable” in the same sentence, just stared at him in astonishment.  
He also seemed strangely reluctant to talk about the night of the attack. John had tried to ask him why he hadn’t shifted back but Sherlock had deflected his question, and after John had assured him that he was okay Sherlock hadn’t asked him about his wound again.

Perhaps it was Sherlock’s odd behaviour that made John’s lock himself in his room the next night of full moon, just a few days after Sherlock’s transformation.  
He felt a bit embarrassed about it, he knew it was nothing but an irrational fear that prompted him to do it – but still, he felt a lot safer when he turned the key in his lock, hoping that Sherlock wouldn’t hear.

He didn’t know if Sherlock had noticed. John suspected he had, because the next day Sherlock looked at John with a strange expression, and John thought he could read the exhaustion and the guilt on his face.

 

Sherlock didn’t take any more cases for a while, but he didn’t complain about being bored either. He was quieter than usual, and John suspected he may be working on something after all, because he was spending a lot of time on his laptop or reading books instead of experimenting or playing the violin. To John’s great surprise, it was Sherlock that breached the subject of the night of the stake-out. 

He entered the living room one afternoon as John was watching the telly. He sat in his chair and was silent for a while, but when John glanced at him he saw Sherlock wasn’t looking at the television screen but was staring at him. Sherlock didn’t look away.

“You asked me why I didn’t change back,” he said, out of the blue. “The night you were shot.”

“Oh,” said John, who hadn’t been expecting that. He cleared his throat. “Yes, well. You don’t have to talk about it. If you don’t want to. I just– ”

“I couldn’t,” Sherlock blurted out, interrupting John. “I don’t know why, but I couldn’t change back.”

John wasn’t sure what to say to that. He waited for Sherlock to add something, but he turned to look at the TV screen. They stayed in silence for another few minutes, and then Sherlock talked again.

“It never happened to me before, never. I had no idea how it could feel, to have no control over your transformation. The experience was… quite frightening.”

It was alarming, to hear Sherlock confess something as human as fear. In all the months he had known him, John had never once heard him talk about his own feelings or emotions, except to comment on how they stood in the way of pure reason and cold logic and as such had no use whatsoever, and were something to be ignored or suppressed. Of course, John knew it was just words, that Sherlock was as human as any other man, whether he was willing to admit it or not – but still, Sherlock was reckless and bold, he dived head-first into danger without a second thought, and John had never thought he would hear him admit he’d been afraid.

John looked at Sherlock’s profile, not knowing what to say, and Sherlock said, “Tell me what happened in Afghanistan.”

That non-sequitur was so unexpected that at first John thought he had heard it wrong. Then Sherlock looked at him with an expectant face, and John knew he had understood just fine.

“Why?” John asked.

“Two nights ago you locked yourself in your bedroom,” Sherlock said, and John felt himself flush, “You’ve done it on every night of full moon, ever since you’ve moved here. I didn’t notice right away, and when I did I thought it had something to do with you seeing me in my wolf-form – but you slept quite peacefully with a werewolf in your bed. It was something you did even before you moved here, didn’t you? It’s an old habit.”

It was very unnerving to be at the receiving end of Sherlock’s sharp gaze and his stream of deductions, and John felt a pang of sympathy for every suspect Sherlock had ever questioned.

“I don’t see how this has anything to do with… anything, really,” he protested. 

Sherlock studied him in silence for a few seconds. “No, you really don’t, do you?” he said slowly, with an air of dawning realization, and John almost expected him to assume his customary thinking pose. He didn’t.

“You were the only member of your unit to survive the attack,” Sherlock said. “Unusual for trained werewolves to spare lives, you were saved at the very last moment. You probably thought you were going to die along with the others – for a moment you were about to.”

John couldn’t reply. He could do nothing but stare and listen, because his throat felt uncomfortably tight.

“You didn’t. You were brought to the hospital and kept under close observation – they had to wait until the next new moon to make sure you hadn’t been turned, and when it was clear you hadn’t, you received your medal and your honourable discharge and were sent back to London. You were required to attend a few therapy sessions because of your PTSD, which you did, but after these compulsory meetings you stopped going altogether. You never told your therapist much of anything, anyway.” 

“How do you know all this?” John asked. His voice was hoarse and his tone clipped. He didn’t know why but he could feel the white-hot anger burning in his chest, straining his voice, threatening to spill. “Is that what you’ve been doing, researching me? Or did you ask Mycroft to dig up some files?”

“A bit of both,” Sherlock said, sounding completely unapologetic.

“This is none of your business,” John hissed, and Sherlock’s eyes flashed.

“Oh, I think it might be,” he said. “What where you doing when you locked yourself in your room, John? What happened?”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at,” John replied, and now his heart was racing and his hands were sweating, and he found himself gripping the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles hurt.

“I think you do, John,” Sherlock said, voice soft. “I think you’re just trying not to see.”

Hazy memories danced around John’s mind. A full white moon, a black could unravelling – howls in the distance, the pain, always so much pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to wish away the images of the nightmares that kept him awake at night.

“John,” Sherlock said in a low voice, sounding close, and John opened his eyes with a gasp and saw him standing over him, looking concerned, and he couldn’t stand the pity he saw in his eyes, he couldn’t stand having him so close, crowding him. He sprang to his feet, pushed hard against Sherlock’s chest. He stumbled backwards, startled, but regained his footing quickly.

“Stop it,” John said, and now his voice was trembling with rage. “I don’t know what made you think… that you had _any right_. Sod it.”

He sidestepped Sherlock and strode to the door, blinded by anger.

“John,” Sherlock called, but John had already taken his coat and stormed out of the flat without putting it on. Sherlock didn’t follow.

 

He walked without paying attention to where he was going. Fragments of his conversation with Sherlock kept going around and around in his head, no matter how hard he tried to think of something else. His hands were shaking. He was still feeling outraged at Sherlock’s nerve, it was unbelievable that he’d gone snooping into John’s personal files, that he had kept pushing for details John was clearly uncomfortable sharing. And what for? What for, indeed.  
He slowed down when he saw he’d reached Hyde Park. He sat on a bench and closed his eyes, tilting his head towards the sun.  
The day was warm, and there were lots of children playing in the park and running about.  
He breathed in slowly, trying to calm himself down. Sherlock’s words had been like a breach in a dam, and there was little John could do to stop the flood of memories.  
He remembered the first night of full moon back in London, in his small flat – the sense of claustrophobia, the overwhelming panic. He had thrown the blanket away, got out of bed, crouched in a corner with his back to the wall. And then what? 

He heard someone approaching, then sitting next to him. He opened his eyes.

“I didn’t know how to raise the subject,” Sherlock said. “I wasn’t even sure you didn’t know until today. Your reaction made it quite clear.”

John shook his head, slowly. “I wasn’t turned,” he said. “If you’ve read my files you must’ve seen it.”

“Maybe not right away,” Sherlock said. He looked at John, then turned again, staring ahead at nothing in particular. “But it’s not impossible for the transformation to have occurred later. Incredibly rare, yes – but not impossible. There have been a few cases.”

John brushed his hands on his thighs. “I don’t remember,” he confessed. “I don’t remember what happened two nights ago,” _or on any other night of full moon since I came back_ John thought, but didn’t say.

Sherlock got up. “Let’s go home,” he said, walking away, and John followed.

 

It made no sense, John thought. It made absolutely no sense. How could he have transformed without ever noticing? How could he not remember?  
“Your experience was incredibly traumatic,” Sherlock pointed out when John voiced those questions. “It is not surprising that you tried to suppress it, consciously or not. You’ve hidden those memories away in a corner of your mind, and in time you’ve dissociated yourself from them, and from what you had become.”  
John find it hard to believe that not even Sherlock had noticed during the months they had lived together, but Sherlock said he’d never paid much attention to what John was doing after he had retired to his bedroom. A part of John suspected that Sherlock wasn’t all that immune to the influence of moon phases as he had initially led John to believe, and that on a full moon night even his mind, fine as it was, might be a bit clouded.  
There was a very simple way to verify Sherlock’s theory, and that was to wait until the next full moon.  
John wasn’t overly keen on the idea. He suggested that they found a place away from London, but Sherlock insisted it was better to remain at 221B, in a familiar place where John wouldn’t feel disoriented or threatened.

“Are you insane?” John asked. “We can’t stay here! Ms Hudson– ”

“Can take care of herself,” Sherlock said.

“What if I hurt you?” John observed.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “You never have, and we’ve lived under the same roof for months.”

John sighed. “That’s not the point. It will be… different this time.”

“Believe me John,” Sherlock said, “human or werewolf I could take you in a fight.”

John supposed his scepticism showed, because Sherlock jumped up and motioned for John to do the same. “Up you get,” he ordered.

“Really?” John said, getting to his feet. “You may be taller than me but I have military training, you know.”

He hadn’t even finished the sentence that Sherlock pounced on him. He pushed back but Sherlock proved to be surprisingly strong, and soon he had John pinned on the ground, his forearm pressed against his throat.

“As I said,” Sherlock told John with a little smirk, “I can hold my own in a fight.”

 

When the night came they remained at 221B, as Sherlock had said they should, though John insisted on locking the door of the flat, and even went as far as moving the sofa in front of the door. Sherlock said he was being ridiculous but John felt unsettled and anxious, as if only now the reality of his situation was starting to dawn on him. He kept pacing around the flat, not unlike Sherlock when John had been shot. They had talked about werewolf transformations – Sherlock would be there with him the whole time and he would shift too, but John still felt nervous. He could feel the familiar sense of restlessness and this time he recognized it for what it was, and it was scaring him. 

Sherlock had eventually told him that even born werewolves felt the pull of a full moon, that if they didn’t turn it was like a constant itch under the skin. 

“It feels wrong not to turn on those nights,” Sherlock had said. “Like being in the wrong body. Of course, one learns how to ignore it. I haven’t turned during a full moon in quite a while.”

John had asked for instructions but Sherlock had just said it was something that came naturally, and he’d already done it a few times. 

“Well, not _knowingly_ ,” John had said.

“My point exactly,” Sherlock had replied.

So there was nothing to do but wait for the moonrise. Sherlock had asked John if he might feel more comfortable in his own room but the idea of waiting there made John feel trapped and helpless, so they settled in the living room. Sherlock had spread some blankets and pillows on the floor, and even a couple of John’s jumpers.

“Where did you get those?” John asked.

“Your drawer,” Sherlock replied. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. They smell like you, you might find it comforting.”

Sherlock went to the window and drew the curtains close. “Shouldn’t be long,” he murmured. He started to unbutton his shirt. “You’d better undress as well, though I admit that shirt might not be such a great loss.”

Sherlock took off his shirt, his trousers and then his pants without the slightest hesitation. He clearly wasn’t self-conscious about his body, and John had to admit there was something very graceful about it. Sherlock bent to pick up a blanket from the floor and slung it over his shoulder, then looked pointedly at John, who was still fully dressed.  
John got up and started to take off his own clothes. He wasn’t shy about nudity – difficult to be when you were a doctor and had spent years in the army – but it was so very strange to undress in front of his naked best friend. He threw his clothes on his chair and wrapped himself in a blanket as well, before sitting on the floor where the sofa would be, back against the floor. Sherlock came to sit beside him.

“You don’t have to look so scared, no one is going to die,” Sherlock pointed out, looking at John.

“Well, I _am_ scared,” John snapped. “And I’ll remind you that you were the one who said how frightening it was to have no control over this, so kindly shut up.”

He leaned with his head against the wall and closed his eyes, breathing quickly. His skin was starting to feel hot. Sherlock remained silent. 

“You still there?” John asked, without opening his eyes, and what an idiotic question that was, it wasn’t like he expected Sherlock to walk away, but Sherlock took his hand and squeezed it reassuringly.

“It’s all right, John,” he said, “Don’t fight it.”

 _Don’t fight what?_ John wanted to ask, but suddenly he felt it – hot pain blooming at the base of his spine, travelling up his back with a shiver, making him go rigid with shock. He gasped Sherlock’s name, and Sherlock moved in front of him, framing his face with his hands.

“It’s all right,” he repeated, soothingly.

John shook his head, he knelt up, arching his back – it was like his spine was lengthening, he had to get on his hands and knees to relieve the pressure, curling in on himself. Under his skin something was growing, making every follicle itch, he heard a crunching noise that seemed to come from his very own skull and tried to cry out, but it came out as a strangled yelp. He snapped his mouth close with a sharp click of teeth. He tried to fist his hands in the blanket under him but his fingers had retreated and were no longer there, and when he scratched at the blanket he tore it with his long claws. Then the pain ceased, as suddenly as it had started.  
The wolf lay on the floor, exhausted and trembling, covering his head with his large paws. 

He felt another wolf approaching and raised his head. A black wolf, a bigger wolf. John growled, and the other wolf whined and lowered himself on the floor. He rolled on his back with a short bark and thumped his tail on the floor, then rolled onto his stomach again. John huffed, confused. The wolf didn’t look threatening. He sniffed cautiously in his direction. His scent was familiar, and soothing, even if John could not think of where he had smelt it before. He got up and approached the wolf slowly, lowering his head to sniff at him. The other wolf waited patiently, wagging his tail, then raised his head to give John’s muzzle a playful lick. John backed away, startled, and the black wolf whined. He got up and touched his nose to John’s, and John was reassured by the friendly gesture. He went to curl on his blanket again, burrowing his muzzle in a jumper. The other wolf lay down beside him, and put his head on his back. It reminded John of something, thought he couldn’t think what.

 

When John woke up it was to the light of day and in his human form, although he couldn’t remember having changed back. He blinked, surprised to see the room lit by the sun, and saw that he was still lying on the blanket, curled onto his side – and apparently using Sherlock’s lap as a pillow. He felt Sherlock’s hand on his hair, petting gently, but it stopped when Sherlock sensed that John was awake.

“Are you okay?” Sherlock asked, staying very still but without removing his hand from John’s head. 

John felt suddenly very aware of the fact that they were both naked and he was all but curled around Sherlock, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. It felt… intimate, and good, and _safe_. He sighed.

“I’m okay,” he replied calmly.

Sherlock gave him a little smile, then his hand slid from his head to his shoulder, and John felt his fingers trace his bite scar. It was big, and it was ugly, and John always tried not to think about it or look at it too much, but Sherlock examined it with no trace of pity or revulsion in his eyes.

John sat up slowly, and Sherlock let his hand fall into his lap. He glanced at John’s face and then away.

“Well,” he said, and nothing else. 

John smiled. “Well,” he parroted.

“We’d better get dressed,” Sherlock said.

“Yes,” John agreed. He took Sherlock’s face in his hands, watched Sherlock’s eyes go wide, and pressed his mouth against Sherlock’s. It was a chaste, close-mouthed kiss. He didn’t know why he did it and didn’t question it, it felt as natural as breathing. When he leaned back Sherlock stared at him, lips slightly parted. John lowered his hands and cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” he said, because Sherlock looked more shocked than pleased and that wasn’t a terribly good sign, was it? But when he tried to get up Sherlock grabbed his arm, keeping him down.

“You were wrong,” he said to John, voice rough. “Not much of a lone wolf.”

John grinned.

“Well then,” he said. “Sounds like a good match.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should probably come with a "pop psychology" warning.
> 
> Smudging of a case (very) loosely based on "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", because who doesn't love Sherlock losing his shit over John getting hurt.
> 
> Thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Unoriginal title is unoriginal and may change.  
> English is not my first language and all that jazz.


End file.
